How to not get ripped off by High Frequency Traders - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/how_to_not_get_ripped_off_by_hft.html <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, a traditional US retail investor does not have the flexibility described here. Lewis describes Electronic Market Makers (EMMs) and Payment For Order Flow (PFOF) - under these models, your order never actually reaches a market. It is routed directly to a market making firm (usually Citadel, Knight, Pershing, or Getco) that fills the order immediately if the price is marketable and then trades out of the position later. This indirection makes the whole discussion around your position in the order book somewhat moot.

It is important to recognize that under Reg NMS the market making firm must fill you at the prevailing market price (the NBBO). While they technically could sweep the market to move the market price before filling, this almost never happens for a retail order since they are so small.

For this reason, the whole discussion around HFT "front-running" isn't very topical to the retail investor buying individual stocks and it barely affects the cost of execution of funds ($0.43 per $10,000 notional value traded according to [1])

In summary, the people fanning this flame are not trying to protect retail investors... If they were, they would focus on the larger scams on the street (exhorbitant management fees for actively managed funds, for example)

[1] [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1928510](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1928510)

<comment><USER3> It saddens me that people lump Market Making and HFT together. Over the past 100 years, the bid-ask spread has fairly steadily decreased due to technology and this fact in isolation is uniformly a good thing for retail investors.

[http://www.cxoadvisory.com/5737/big-ideas/trading- frictions-...](http://www.cxoadvisory.com/5737/big-ideas/trading-frictions- over-the-long-run/)

Other HFT methods are less clearly on net socially good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few points:

1) This doesn't address the front-running issue. (Where different exchanges receive the buy/sell order at a different times and HFT can abuse those microsecond differences)

2) It's a universal truth that people who are better informed are harder to rip off. So that's not very persuasive. You can't reasonably expect regular people to know in which situations they'll be paying a premium for a liquidity service they may not even want.

3) It's completely fair to ask ourselves as a society if HFT groups are making a contribution to society that warrants the money they make. And if transparency with regard to HFT trading strategies leads regular people and sophisticated investors to make different decisions, then that means that the lack of transparency worked in favor of HFT. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume much of the HFT profits are just an externality. The decline of HFT is in part because investors are getting wise to the shenanigans.

<comment><USER5> "1) This doesn't address the front-running issue. (Where different exchanges receive the buy/sell order at a different times and HFT can abuse those microsecond differences)"

This is only an issue if your order is large enough to take out the entire liquidity of one of the exchanges. If that is the case, by definition you are not a retail investor, you are an institutional investor and part of the value add you are supposedly adding is your ability to operate in a complex market.

"2) It's a universal truth that people who are better informed are harder to rip off. So that's not very persuasive. You can't reasonably expect regular people to know in which situations they'll be paying a premium for a liquidity service they may not even want."

So informed market participants should subsidize ignorant ones?

"3) It's completely fair to ask ourselves as a society if HFT groups are making a contribution to society that warrants the money they make. And if transparency with regard to HFT trading strategies leads regular people and sophisticated investors to make different decisions, then that means that the lack of transparency worked in favor of HFT. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume much of the HFT profits are just an externality. The decline of HFT is in part because investors are getting wise to the shenanigans."

Agreed. We should also have that discussion around dark pool operators, hedge funds, and investment banks. While we are at it, lets talk about photo sharing websites and internet chat services as well.

<comment><USER4> 1) Chris claims "The fact of the matter is that HFT's can't rip you off.". Front-running[1] is an example where HFT's do rip people off, simply because they didn't know it was going on. When the performance of institutional investors is harmed in this way that harms everybody with savings or a retirement fund. Not just the guys at wall street.

2) Straw man.

3) Yes, while we're at it let's change the subject to photo sharing websites instead. That sounds reasonable.

Edit:

[1] Again referring to the technically legal version of "front running" as used by Michael Lewis where HFT abuse buy/sell orders arriving at different times at the exchanges.

<comment><USER6> > 3) Yes, while we're at it let's change the subject to photo sharing websites > instead. That sounds reasonable.

The question: "does Facebook spying on teenagers to help Abercrombie & Fitch sell them crap they don't need add social value commensurate with how much money they make doing it?" isn't an attempt to change the subject, but rather a glib attempt to criticize the structure of the question. Since when do we judge compensation based on value added to society, and if that's what we do, why don't we apply that approach beyond finance?

<comment><USER4> I disagree. It _is_ an attempt to change the subject from the object level: "is HFT harming society and do we need more transparency or regulation" to the meta level: "if we have to do something about HFT, then why not address X, Y, Z also?".

It's not a legitimate argument because it can be used to derail _any conversion_ that criticizes one particular aspect of society.

It goes without saying that there are moral questions to be raised about facebook acquisitions and compensation in fields outside of finance. But it's not part of this conversation.

<comment><USER6> That's not the argument. The argument is: "if this mode of reasoning is valid, and pursuant to it we must do something about HFT, then we would also feel compelled to do something about X, Y, and Z as well. But because we don't feel compelled to do something about X, Y, and Z, that implies that the mode of reasoning is not valid."

In other words, he disagrees with the premise that compensation need bear some relation to economic value created. Empirically, that's a premise that we as a society reject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These discussions would be improved if more of the participants understood the problem of transacting in large blocks of tradable instruments. The impression HN trading discussions create is that there is a universe in which block trades are frictionless or even remotely predictable.

In fact, moving large blocks across the market isn't just an annoying detail of the markets; it's one of the basic fundamental problems of institutional trading, and a large part of the rationale for the existence of brokers. Transacting in blocks of stock is to professional trading what the CAP theorem is to distributed software development.

One of the most famous and approachable books about market structure is Larry Harris' _Trading And Exchanges_. The book is like the TCP/IP Illustrated of money. It is supremely readable and written in a style that software developers in particular will find congenial. You can get a Kindle version of it right now. I feel extremely comfortable recommending it. It is a great read.

The example of trying to move a large block of (fictitious) Smithsonian Industries is one of the opening, motivating examples the book uses to outline the challenges of trading. The inheritor of a huge chunk of Smithsonian Industries needs to sell 900,000 shares of thinly-traded stock. The example continues:

 _Goldman 's block brokers face the following predicament. If nobody knows that they have stock to sell, they will not be able to sell it. However, if too many people know that a large block of stack is hanging over the market, speculators will push the price down. The Goldman brokers thus must be selective when approaching potential buyers._

The motivating example Lewis gives in his book is of a trader at a large investment bank who, based on their $2MM/year salary, is presumably being paid handsomely for the service of figuring out how to move blocks like that without having the market shift out from under them. In Harris' example, the Goldman traders research other owners of Smithsonian Industries and approaches them privately and individually in the hopes of placing much of the block privately at a small discount. In Lewis' example, the handsomely-paid trader sees a spot price in their blotter screen, expects to push a single button (no, really, that's how Lewis frames it) to sell at that price, and is outraged when the price moves.

There's an interesting debate to be had about HFT and, particularly, the conflicts of interest between broker-dealers and exchanges and dark pools. But it's hard to have that discussion if you start from the belief that institutional trading is supposed to be easy. The opposite is true.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think people forget how much front running happened in the bad old days on the stock market floor, how the NYSE organized a cartel that kept trading prices high, and that the bid/ask spread is usually a lot less than it used to be.

One thing people don't say much about HFT is that the HFT practitioners got the exchanges to add undocumented order types that let them, in some cases, take advantage of people who do limit orders as the author of this post describes. The best description of this is at

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-HFT-Collected- Frequency/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-HFT-Collected- Frequency/dp/1481978357)

Often when I trade stocks I like to set a limit order at a price that might be a percent or so better than the market rate. Since the price fluctuates, odds are pretty good that I'll get my fill. Now if it is just the normal Brownian motion, it's a good thing that I get my fill, but if the stock is getting hammered by an external event that is driving it way down I might have hit the limit for the wrong reason and be unhappy I got the fill. In situations like that, HFT traders have an advantage with their special order types.

I think the normal retail investor who buys and holds for a while is not hurt terribly by HFT and flash crashes(unless the market is depressed because of the fear of HFT) but you can definitely get burned if you use stop orders. If a price goes down quickly, that can trigger your stop order, causing you to sell at a bad time.

</comment><comment><USER5> As usual Chris does a good job of explaining in simple terms how the markets actually work. The one thing I would have liked to see in this article is a discussion of the pro's and con's of paying for liquidity vs execution risk.

From my perspective it is almost always better to have sooner execution with a liquidity tax than an order floating in the market but I'm not sure how to quantify that as a retail stock purchaser.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am not a finance expert. What would happen if you traded stocks using a continual series of discrete uniform price auctions?

Each buyer enters a sealed bid consisting of the amount he wishes to buy, and at what price. Each seller enters a sealed offer consisting of the amount he wishes to sell, and at what price.

When the auction interval ends, the secure settlement system orders the bids and offers, and calculates the common settlement price such that every bid higher than that price can be satisfied with the offers lower than that price. Every unit in the auction is traded at that one price. Unsatisfied bids and offers could be set up to roll over to subsequent intervals, or to expire.

The settlement system takes a fee from all trades, as a fraction of the amount a buyer was willing to pay, but didn't need to, and a fraction of the amount a seller got in excess of what he wanted. The marginal buyer and seller, who were not pleasantly surprised by the interval's settlement price, pay nothing.

There is no opportunity for front running. If you bid lower than a major institution, your orders will be filled after the institution's orders. You can't re-sell to it at a higher price because it already has what it wants. Trading speed is irrelevant. All that matters is that your orders are in before the settlement interval closes, which happens on a human scale.

Why would such a system be unsuitable for our modern finance system?

<comment><USER5> What scale would you use? If we choose 15 minutes, then day traders who sit at a computer screen all day have an advantage over people who have to work.

Ok then, how about once a day. Well then people without kids have an advantage as they have more time to research this stuff.

Not to be overly sarcastic, but you can't pick a discrete time period that doesn't have trading speed as a component.

<comment><USER9> If you set your orders and offers to roll over through multiple intervals, you don't need to babysit them.

You are absolutely guaranteed to pay _at most_ what you bid, and to receive _at least_ your reserve price. You could leave them in the system for a thousand years and never be disappointed in your trade.

I can set my bid at what I think a company is worth to me, and simply leave it there until the clearing price is lower.

I would probably set the interval to one hour, with 24 auctions clearing per day, and each tradable item settling at a different position on the clock, so as to not overload my servers at any given time.

<comment><USER5> Right now you can get the same guarantees about price with a simple limit order.

If you don't care to watch each time period, why do you care what the time period is. If I am happy to set my price and let it roll throughout the day without change, then the existing system works just fine for me.

The issue comes from wanting to take new information into account to change the price I want to get. In that case, I do need to see the results of each auction and adjust accordingly. Once I allow for that any time period you set is unfair for someone. We just need to decide on the balance what time period has the best price discover/least overhead/is most fair to the participants we want.

My hypothesis is that the current system does this best.

<comment><USER9> My hypothesis is that the current system is most profitable for the people running it.

Using continuous trades, the difference between the price someone _would_ accept/pay is usually very close to the price they _do_ accept/pay. That's because arbitrageurs are continuously taking tiny little bites from the theoretical benefit of trade to the buyers and sellers until everyone is almost indifferent to trade, regardless of the actual price they had in mind. The trades are spread out by time, such that each one can be attacked separately (by a sufficiently fast attacker).

The system is set up to consume the big triangular areas on the supply vs demand chart that do not actually impact whether a trade takes place.

If you settle multiple trades at once rather than a continual series of individual transactions, there are fewer opportunities to take a bite out of other people's trades by being a very fast middleman.

Also, the only way to test your hypothesis is by comparing it against every other possible trading system. So I'd probably start off with a less ambitious claim, like "the current system is more fair than what Log from Blammo proposed." That way, it could be tested just by setting up the competing system and watching what happens.

<comment><USER5> I actually think there are lots of trading schemes that could prevent speed being a major advantage, but discrete time auctions are not one. They just change who gets the time advantage. The only way to remove time advantage from the field would be to make it so that order time was not calculated in fill priority. There are markets that do this currently (pro-rata markets give larger orders priority over smaller ones regardless of order time). There are also markets that have tried randomized matching and other esoteric methods. Not many people liked trading this way so volume dried up.

If we really wanted to remove time priority, my favorite way would be to add near infinite price increments. Then if you wanted to pay for priority you could in an explicit way.

I'll buy that my hypothesis was overly broad. Let me rephrase it to, "The current system is way better than the previous system, and I've heard no systems that don't have obvious flaws as compared to the current system."

<comment><USER9> It isn't just about time. If someone knows what you are _willing_ to pay, they can engineer their trades such that you pay exactly that. When the system itself is not paid unless you pay less than you were willing to pay, there is a built in incentive to not reveal that information to potential middlemen.

In that context, trade speed doesn't matter. If arbitrageurs cannot profit by breaking your trade up into two trades with themselves as middleman, it doesn't matter how fast they are.

Aside from that, any system where trades can occur faster than information can enter your eyeball, process in the brain, and shoot down your arm to click a mouse button is one that unfairly disadvantages the unaugmented human participant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the entire point, that the anti-HFT folks are trying to make, that if HFT is abolished then we will still have liquidity? As in "Liquidity is not created by HFT. HFT are just an intermediary between the actual providers of liquidity and the rest of the market".

This is a sincere question, because I really do not understand how HFT "creates liquidity" when they are just buying low and selling high.

<comment><USER11> They are nevertheless buying higher than everyone else and selling lower than everyone else. Otherwise their orders would never get filled.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but if they (the HFT) are not there the only thing that seems to change (in my naive understanding) is that there is no "tax" on liquidity, but the liquidity is still there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For anyone interested in more information, I׳d recommend reading the comments in these two threads [0,1] from Marginal Revolution blog. Two HFT traders wrote thoroughly about HFT. I׳ve never read such an interesting and broad online discussion about HFT. I actually spent most of yesterday׳s afternoon reading these threads.

[0] [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/mat...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/matt- levine-on-michael-lewis-and-hft.html) [1] [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/new...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/new- michael-lewis-book-on-finance-and-high-frequency-trading.html#comments)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're not a pension fund or other large investor, HFT's don't care about your orders.

</comment><comment><USER14> The premise of the post is false. If a large limit order is resting on the books, that's an implied option for the HFTs.

If you place a large bid at $10.00, the HFTs will buy at $10.01. If the market starts going down, they sell to you before the price crashes more. If the price goes up, you never got your fill.

Limit orders don't protect from HFTs exploiting you. What happens is you either don't get filled (price drops to $10.01 and goes back up), or the price drops to $9.99 or less.

</comment><comment><USER15> I personally use limit orders. I think there is an important distinction in deciding how much will be paid for a security. It makes you think about what the security is actually worth, separate from what the market order book is saying about the security at any particular time.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain why any of these is a bad idea? (a) completed transaction tax; (b) regulatory fee on offers/cancellations; (c) insertion of random delays into offers/cancellations;

All could increase friction and reduce the speculative/arbitrage opportunities, while having little effect on those wanting to trade to hold for periods exceeding seconds.

There is a belief that the churn of HFTs/Arbs is enhancing liquidity for "real" investors. There ought to be reasonable questions what amount of churn is useful, adequate, and whether some frothy levels should be constrained in some way.

Is there any way to decide when things are excessivly liquid, in ways that lead to undesirable effects?

<comment><USER5> Any tax you propose will reduce the amount of the taxed thing and introduce unintended consequences. So we have to ask why do you want less transactions or orders? It won't reduce HFT activity for instance. It will just mean that HFT systems will only make more profitable trades. That means higher bid/ask spreads and higher risk limits leading to higher volatility. It also may have the unintended consequence of consolidating more volume into smaller firms.

That doesn't seem to be in anyone's best interest.

As for latency games the issue is not the overall latency it is fifo priority matching. Without changing that bouncing trading signals off of mars won't help.

<comment><USER16> I think a reasonable question is why we consider /more/ transactions a good thing, if a large fraction of them are for holding periods in small number of seconds.

I think I am questioning the fifo paradigm, which creates these arbitrage opportunities, especially when there are multiple fifo queues representing multiple markets. It is not clear to me that batching things in 1 sec increments, and randomizing the our ordering would be bad or unfair.

I also don't see why a modest fee that would make short-hold transactions for tiny gains is a bad thing.

Structuring the system to reward HFT latency advantages seems opposed to stability, if one believes that the market is for actual investments.

HFT seems to be a second order phenomenon that games the system, and may have come to dwarf what could be called legitimate investment.

At what point is there "enough" liquidity, and when is "too much"? I suspect the people who do HFT and other arb techniques think there is no such thing as too much, because they profit on the churn. Others see this as producing nothing of societal value, extracting real money from the system that could be used for other purposes.

<comment><USER5> "I think a reasonable question is why we consider /more/ transactions a good thing, if a large fraction of them are for holding periods in small number of seconds"

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but can we at least say that transaction count is not what we are actually interested in? In a vacuum we (larger society) don't care a whit about the number of transactions that occur?

"It is not clear to me that batching things in 1 sec increments, and randomizing the our ordering would be bad or unfair."

It is clear to me that batching things in 1 sec increments would be as unfair to someone as the current system (I'm sorry to not back this up, but I've been doing a ton of commenting about it in the last few days and don't have the patience I did). It's possible that this unfairness is "better" for society overall. I don't know how to quantify that.

"I also don't see why a modest fee that would make short-hold transactions for tiny gains is a bad thing."

My "expert" opinion on market making strategies is that this would increase the bid/ask spread and volatility in the market. Further my opinion is that this is a bad thing for retail investors and market makers, to the advantage of large institutional investors. I don't have the stamina to prove this assertion.

"Structuring the system to reward HFT latency advantages seems opposed to stability, if one believes that the market is for actual investments."

This is a common simplification that I think deserves a lot of thought. Many folks on Hacker News think that the market is for "investment". Usually they equate this to "bootstrapping enterprises that aren't viable without external money". This is an obvious bias for an internet forum dedicated to startups to have. In reality, the vast majority of market forces are not about that. They are about risk mitigation. So when you say that HFT "dwarfs" legitimate investment, are you saying it doesn't provide a valid mode for bootstraping enterprises, or are you saying it doesn't help with risk mitigation?

Your answer to that question means a lot for how we debate the topic. A similar answer is available for your assertion that HFT is a second order phenomenon.

As for when is there enough liquidity? I'd say when people stop paying for it. Which hasn't happened yet. Paying for liquidity is reaching a saturation point, because it has gotten so cheap. This is most obviously demonstrated by the massive loss in value that HFT groups have had in the last 5 years. If anything we have too much liquidity, and that comes from someone who's paycheck comes from an HFT.

<comment><USER16> Thanks, I appreciate the answer, and am trying to be more informed.

On transaction count, I think "we" /may/ care about transaction count, if the majority of transactions are shams or gaming the trading system. To the extent that the value of the transactions turns up in statistics like GDP, then they distort "our" view of economic activity. Perhaps that is a problem with metrics that include such transactions rather than their existence.

Let's table discussion of batching or randomization.

In terms of volatility, I will proffer that HFT and program trading go hand- in-hand in my mind, and that program trading at high frequency seems to be a volatility amplifier. It's not yet clear to me why added damping friction automatically leads to wider spreads and volatility as you indicate. I accept I may be uninformed on the matter.

When I speak to "investment" I think more of capital gain and dividend than of capitalization from public offering. Over not long periods, the value of shares traded "long" usually greatly exceeds the value of the offering. That is the majority of "investment", and doesn't really relate to bootstrapping startup-ness.

I think there is a fair discussion to be had about amounts of liquidity and risk mitigation. Some reasonable questions are about whose risk is being mitigated, at what cost to whom else, whether all affected parties are willing participants or if they are left no viable alternatives.

The argument is that the "risk" being mitigated is a derivitive of "true" investment, and should be of a lower aggregate value than the underlying security. When the mitigation is exceeding the value of the asset, then that suggests the system is out of balance. Relate to aggregate CDO valuations exceeding the value of the underlying securities.

I'm not saying I accept that argument, or reject your point about risk- mitigation. I'm trying to understand the forces that should balance, and how one might judge them.

I'm not sanguine about the claim that payments for liquidity are proxies for the will of an informed market, since I'm not a Chicagoan who thinks the market is always right by definition. There can be market failures, and it seems possible that "over liquidity" may represent a market failure.

thanks.

<comment><USER5> On the transaction count issue, I agree that there may be some societal good to removing sham or gaming trades from the markets, but that is not what a transaction tax targets, it targets all transactions whether they are shams or not. Further a transaction tax raises the cost of entry for all market participants, without providing any disincentive to those making sham trades.

It's possible that HFT is a volatility amplifier, it's hard to judge though because HFT rose when other macro market forces were driving huge amounts of volatility into the markets. One thing I think most people will agree on is that market segmentation and electronic access drove down the price of trading dramatically for everyone and enabled a variety of extremely useful investment vehicles for the "retail" investor (I'm thinking of ETFs especially). Any system that has market segmentation and electronic access will also enable algorithmic trading. My opinion is that it is foolish to throw out all the positive benefits in the name of some artificial "fairness" between human and computer traders.

Chris Stucchio has a good explanation about the mechanics of market making at [http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html)

Understanding those mechanics we can see that any added costs that the market maker bears must be reflected in their trades and will eventually drive them to increase their spread on the order books. If enough of the market makers do this it will increase the spread which is the biggest driving cost in trading after operational costs.

Capital gains and dividends are a mechanism to make capital aquisition possible. They happen to be the attributes of the capital markets that you are most interested in but there is nothing sacred about them (in fact lots shares lose capital and many companies don't pay dividends). For many other market participants hedging against inflation risk is vastly more important than dividends for instance. My opinion is that we should enable a system that allows for as open of access as possible to these markets for as cheap a cost without bias towards whats most important to any class of market participant. It is also my opinion that HFT actually does these things and that is why they are so scary to hedge funds and big banks.

I am also not a Chicagoan (well in an economic sense) and you are right over liquidity may be some sort of market failure. As someone who sells liquidity I will tell you that the price of it is currently being propped up with legislation. If it weren't for the sub-penny rule the spreads on some commonly traded instruments would be much smaller than they currently are. I'd also say if you figured out a way to remove some of the liquidity in the system without increasing my costs I'd appreciate it as this whole competing in an efficient market thing is for the birds.

<comment><USER16> Thanks, I appreciate the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just started learning about high frequency trading. I was interested to learn about some of the lore surrounding the field. While digital algorithms are relatively new, trading algorithms, in a conceptual sense, have existed for at least hundreds of years. I don't usually throw around links to my own content, but I think this is relevant: [http://codyromano.com/using-pigeons- as-algorithms/](http://codyromano.com/using-pigeons-as-algorithms/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Author would benefit from a closer reading of the M. Lewis piece. It's well researched far from trivial. What's interesting about it is that it tells the story of how outsiders modeled the various ways to rip off <institutional> traders. They did this first and the empirically pattern-matched observed behaviour. They then did both physical and social market-micro-structure studies.

Lets take a look at this section (From attached article):

 _The fact of the matter is that HFT's can't rip you off. You are never under any obligation to do business with them. In spite of that, lots of sophisticated investors voluntarily pay HFTs every day. An important question for all the critics of HFT to grapple with is, "why do sophisticated investors voluntarily pay for something useless?"_

This comes right after the section on why people don't adopt obvious strategies (use limit orders, etc):

 _Why doesn't everyone do this?

This is an obvious question to ask. The answer is, quite simply, execution risk. Execution risk is the risk that you place an order but your trade never actually happens._

The Analysis Lewis outlines in his book shows that HFT is specificially engineered <to create execution risk>. It engineers artificial scarcity (the opposite of liquidity). Empirical study from Lewis's book:

 _Finally [The Trader] complained so loudly that they sent the developers, the guys who came to RBC in the Carlin acquisition. "They told me it was because I was in New York and the markets were in New Jersey and my market data was slow," Katsuyama says. "Then they said that it was all caused by the fact that there are thousands of people trading in the market. They'd say: 'You aren't the only one trying to do what you're trying to do. There's other events. There's news.' " <If that was the case, he asked them, why did the market in any given stock dry up only when he was trying to trade in it?> [emphasis added] To make his point, he asked the developers to stand behind him and watch while he traded. "I'd say: 'Watch closely. I am about to buy 100,000 shares of AMD. I am willing to pay $15 a share. There are currently 100,000 shares of AMD being offered at $15 a share — 10,000 on BATS, 35,000 on the New York Stock Exchange, 30,000 on Nasdaq and 25,000 on Direct Edge.' You could see it all on the screens. We'd all sit there and stare at the screen, and I'd have my finger over the Enter button. I'd count out loud to five. . . . " 'One. . . . " 'Two. . . . See, nothing's happened. " 'Three. . . . Offers are still there at 15. . . . " 'Four. . . . Still no movement. . . . " 'Five.' Then I'd hit the Enter button, and — boom! — all hell would break loose. The offerings would all disappear, and the stock would pop higher."_

This is why it's being investigated by the FBI, in addition the other issues (front running, NPI, etc).

 _" There are many people in government who are very focused on this and who are concerned about it and who think it breaks the law," an FBI spokesman said. "There is a big concern that high-frequency traders are getting material nonpublic information ahead of others and trading on it."_

<comment><USER19> Your example does exactly what the author recommends you not to do; cross the order book. In your example, you're supposed to place a limit order at 14.99.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't do anything. Then you never get any shares, and the market moves higher because there is a 100,000 shares on the order book and the market will move higher for legit reasons.

The way not to get scalped, is to place the order in a way where it arrives at all the exchanges at the same time, that way the HFT guys and their microwave data links can't peek at your order on BATS, and then beat you to the other exchanges.

The accusation is they see the 100,000 share order hit BATS, 10,000 get filed, then the HFT guys buy 90,000 shares on the other exchanges before your order gets forwarded, and you are stuck paying the HFT guys $15.02.

<comment><USER21> The HFT guys aren't buying 90,000 shares on the other exchanges. They're just updating their ASK price on those exchanges to slightly raise the price to reflect the new information that just hit the market. If someone wants to buy 100,000 shares RIGHT NOW it's a good sign that the price should be going up. Katsuyama/RBC were used to their proprietary information staying a secret that only they knew for longer before the HFTs jumped in and made the market respond faster.

That might be a bummer for Katsuyama/RBC but it's great for everyone else on the market who now benefit from a price that updates faster.

<comment><USER20> How do you "update" your ASK price? They are either front running by buying the shares at $15.00-$15.01, or, if they are their own orders, then they cancel them. It is the same thing.

If someone wants to buy 100,000 shares, and the market says there are 100,000 shares available at $15, the order should complete at $15.

<comment><USER21> You update your ASK price by canceling your order and submitting a new one with a different price.

> If someone wants to buy 100,000 shares, and the market says there are > 100,000 shares available at $15, the order should complete at $15.

As long as they submit their matching order while my bid is still on the books that's fine. But why should I be required to keep my order on the books for any longer than I want to?

<comment><USER20> You should be able to cancel you order at anytime. What you shouldn't be able to do is to stiff other people's trades, and then use a microwave antenna to change your order before the other person trade arrives.

<comment><USER21> What you think is happening in the world is not what's actually happening.

What's happening:

1) A large block of shares is traded on exchange #1.

2) HFTer notices #1 and very quickly updates the price at which they are willing to buy/sell on exchange #2. No one has any sure knowledge of trades on their way to exchange #2. They can guess. They can infer. But they aren't seeing any actual trades before they hit the exchange.

<comment><USER18> Please explain how you would do this in an open outcry market.

You're talking about front-running the trade inbetween the "sell" decision and the receipt of the signal at the exchange. In otherwords, your bid/offer is in bad faith. I can advertise a car for sale and then when you walk in remove the price and mark up the trade. You cannot do this in an open outcry market. Because it would be subject to retaliation (of various kinds).

Providing bid/ask indication in bad faith is NOT liquidity. Liquidity is not layering a trade to double the volume.

HFT does not increase liquidity. It increases volume, at best. But so does front-running. The bait and switch issue and the front-running issue not interchangeble, but they are closely linked.

Market micro-structure is difficult to discuss because most people are completely ignorant of the mechanics. Its easy to pass of volume for liquidity and to disquise front-running as "market making" or speculation. It is clearly distinct.

<comment><USER21> Market makers are in the business of selling liquidity. They're saying "maybe no one else wants to buy/sell this stock but here I am and I always have a bid/ask on the table." You don't have to trade with them. But a lot of people do every day.

Why do you think those people are trading with market makers if they're doing such shady things?

I don't think you really understand the business that market makers are in. They aren't in the business of trying to front run people. They're in the business of making a penny a share on all the trades that go back and forth. But they face a big risk. When they're busy buying/selling for $50.00/$50.01 what happens when a big & smart hedge fund guy comes along who has new information and knows the price should really be $50.10. They try to buy up as many shares as possible at $50.00 and suddenly the market maker is fucked because they're no longer market making in a stable market.

So the market maker has this big challenge where they have to do a good as job as possible detecting the big & smart hedge fund guy and quickly adjusting the price so they don't get squashed. If they can't do a very good job they have to increase spreads so they make more money in the steady state to make up for their bigger losses. If they do a really good job in this detecting they can lower spreads.

It turns out that HFTers are really good market makers. You can see this because they've successfully competed against each other to the point that they can lower spreads all the way to a penny (a 10x reduction of where they used to be!).

When you look at it this way you can see that market makers aren't trying to screw the big traders, they're trying to avoid getting screwed so that they can better serve everyone else by offering lower prices (lower spreads).

The nice side effect of all of this is that price information gets better communicated to the market faster. If you happen to be randomly selling your MSFT when Mr. Big & Smart shows up you're more likely to get the best possible price due to all the information being correctly communicated to the market.

<comment><USER18> You're missing the point that front running is capital efficient and ~zero risk. There is no discussion of hedging strategy and cost, etc in your reply. It seems plausible that (unobserved) front-running profits could easily subsidize (observed) low-spreads as loss leaders.

<comment><USER21> What front running? Are you talking about arbitrage between exchanges or something else?

<comment><USER18> Anything that starts after "buy/sell" electrons are entered into a book [#] and includes a pricing mark change before "fill" hit my account. This set of trades is broader than what you might imaging, but specifically I'm interested in any trade that (1) has information incorporation; and (2) dependent logic based on (1) and (3) requires sequential execution (ie, fronting). It is not enough to say these trades are not observed. They have to be shown to be impossible (or unprofitable). There is reasonable evidence that they are both possible and profitable in Lewis's book.

# This includes both voluntary and involuntary disclosure.

<comment><USER21> OK, well I haven't read the book (only the NYT excerpt so far) but I am highly skeptical that such trades are happening. I will read the book though, and reserve judgement until then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nanex explains this stuff better than I will so I'm just going to link to their research (tl;dr summary of [1] below). I will accept not all HFT participants are obligated to follow any or all of these behaviours, but they are argued in defence of all HFT activity which is patently not true.

1\. They Provide liquidity, false. Or at least works on a definition of liquidity that is not what would generally be used by other market participants (institutional or retail) - specifically see pinging or using orders to determine interest [2]

2\. Tighten spreads, false. Attributable in the largest part to reg NMS not directly to HFT. Spread volatility has increased.

3\. Lower costs, false. Cheap trading available via discount brokers before HFTs and additional costs to other market participants operating in HFT innundated environments are ignored.

4\. Studies showing positive of HFT cherry pick and are of inconsequential detail, no conclusions should be drawn without deeper analysis of the data

5\. Nannex guys just have an axe to grind repudiation

Plus ignores any other negative side effects of super-high speed trading such as stock specific flash crashes, data overload, and locked / crossed markets. Appreciate some of those can also be attributed to the proliferation of protected markets post Reg NMS.

[1] [http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4594.html](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4594.html) [2] [http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4592.html](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4592.html) (appearing to violate SEA 9.a.1.A)

</comment><comment><USER23> Dunno, I for one value the service HFTs provide. They're the reason that I, as a small investor, can unload 50,000 dollars worth of shares in a couple seconds.

Have you ever traded a stock market with low liquidity? You can have a market sell order sitting all day... I'd rather pay the small HFT toll, I still make plenty anyhow.

<comment><USER24> HFTs aren't really helping your situation at all. Other forms of liquidity generators might be, but HFTs are exploiting microsecond-level arbitrage opportunities. I've never heard of a small investor with sub-second execution requirements. In fact, I'd be curious why you needed to execute 50,000 shares in a few seconds at all. From my perspective, I'd be thrilled if I could sell a few shares over several minutes as long as I were confident I was getting a good price.

<comment><USER5> That is a completely inaccurate generalization about what HFTs do. There is a class of HFT that does latency/venue arbitration but it is a very small niche.

The vast majority of HFT volume on the other hand is traditional market making. This HFT market making is much more efficient and fair than human market making was. It is driving down the bid/ask spread to the thinnest possible levels (at least the thinnest legal levels). This is the single biggest driver to you getting the best price.

Being a retail investor right now is the best it has ever been and HFT systems are a large reason why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There is a lot of 'unless you're selling 100000 shares in a hurry you shouldn't care', but if an HFT 'rips off' a pension fund I very much do care- even if I'm not personally affected I'm sure the added cost will be passed on to the state somehow.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's sad that I as a retail investor need to spend my valuable time focusing on how not to get screwed by the exchanges that have introduced a side business which does not serve the functioning of the market and instead corrupts it.

<comment><USER21> You don't actually need to focus on this. As a retail investor your going to get filled at NBBO (National Best Bid and Offer). The people writing things that make you think otherwise are selling irrational fear.

It's no different than how local news makes people think that crime in the US is at an all time high by reporting on it all the time when, in fact, crime has been dropping for decades.

Don't buy what the fear-mongers are selling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You still lose with Limit Orders. Here is how. I also propose how to actually not get ripped off.

The bid price is $100, the offer price is $101.

You want to buy, but you don't want to cross the spread.

You're worried the $101 isn't actually there - i.e. if you place an order to buy for $102, either the $101 order will get pulled by the HFT trader, or the HFT trader will buy the $101 order and sell it to you at $102.

The article suggests placing a limit order without crossing the spread. i.e. Put a limit order at $100.

So you put the limit order at $100. It sits there, and doesn't move.

10 minutes later, another company in the same industry announces below expected results due to market conditions. As this company is in the same industry, its stock price is negatively affected.

Before you have time to cancel your $100 limit order, the HFT trader has already parsed the negative news and short sold the stock all the way down to $99.5, taking your order with it, you're recorded to have sold at $100.

You lose either way.

The continuous limit order market is where HFT has a lot more edge than you do. You can try to avoid placing market orders that cross the spread, as well as avoid placing limit orders that linger for too long and get taken advantage of.

There's a call auction in the morning before the stock market opens every day. No market orders are allowed. Everyone places limit orders and everyone executes at one price. There is no spread to cross. As long as enough other investors participate in the same call auction, it'll be a lot more difficult for HFT traders to take advantage of your order. (Frequency doesn't even come into play since call auctions are discrete markets, not continuous - there is only 1 open price. This negates the HFT trader's speed advantage, since speed is rendered irrelevant)

Just regurgitating stuff I've learnt with finance at university.

<comment><USER28> Your example doesn't make sense to me. Why would you place an order to buy for $102 if there is an offer for $101 ?

<comment><USER29> Prices move, so traders add a bit of leeway if they want to be sure the trade will execute. The worry with HFT is that the price will move solely in order to screw over this particular trade, rather than as a reflection of overall market conditions.</comment></comment></comment>


Lightning fast left-right movement in Vim - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/unblevable/quick-scope <comment><USER2> Gave it a shot and found the highlighting to be distracting to the point of making it hard to read the current line. I'll try playing with the colors to make it more legible.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start-up when you are not technical? - <AUTHOR>

We are a group of girls in SF that are extremely excited about a start-up idea. We have bounced it off of a few YC alum, and they think it is a great idea too, but we cannot contribute technically.
This is our current plan, what should we do to make it better?
1) Learn Django (we have no python experience, but we can read).
2) Use that knowledge to post a marketing site describing the idea and start collecting email addresses.
3) Since we cannot program, jump straight to getting  the marketing site on Techcrunch and seeing what happens.
4) Find a technical co-founder that realizes we are serious and will join us.
Do you think this will work? What else can we do to help see this company come to light? <comment><USER2> Good luck! Some specific responses:

* You don't need to learn Django to put up a simple marketing page and collect emails. A very simple PHP script will suffice, and for most hosting providers you'll spend less time learning PHP and getting a page up than you will just working out how to install Django and deploy it behind Apache. That stuff is well worth doing when you have a real site to put up, but not for a single page with one form.

* I don't think TC will be interested in featuring a marketing page with no product behind it.

* As naithemilkman asked, how big is your group? If there are more than two of you and you're looking for a technical cofounder to do all the implementation, your idea better involve a lot of non-technical work. Otherwise, frankly, what are you all going to bring to the table?

I do think learning Django is a great idea in general, and it will also give you independence from having to persuade a technical person to join you and work on your project. I like Django because Python is a very easy language for beginning programmers, and there's a lot of reusable Django code out there. The docs and community are pretty solid, too. (If you do start learning Django I'd suggest reading the 1.3 docs, since 1.3 is coming out in a few days.) The other thing that might make sense is to have one or two people focus on Python and back-end Django (views, models/ORM, etc.) and one focus on learning HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Django templates (front-end stuff), if all of you are serious about making a technical contribution.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about pooling together cash and hiring a freelancer to do #2 as another option.

Just out of curiousity, how big is your 'group' and what's the role assignment like? Who's going to be doing what? The reason I ask this is because it sounds like there might be too many 'non techies' involved in the project. Is everyone going to learn to code?

From my short experience in teaching myself to code in python, there is an entire sys admin side to the equation that is often left out of conversations but is really important as well. So I think that's something you need to factor into your to-do list as well. If you're going to be learning Django, you kinda need to know Python. Otherwise the terms will just fly over your head pretty quickly and you'll be making really obvious mistakes (like not putting a comma at the end of a tuple). So having kind of walked this path already, I recommend doing a 101 on Python to begin with (its not that hard to get the basics down). You might find my blogpost on this useful: [http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/how-i-am- le...](http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/how-i-am-learning- python-from-scratch/)

If you do not want to bother yourself too much with sys admin, you probably want to consider hosting your mvp on Google App Engine (GAE) to begin with. But having said that, I don't think there have been many startups who have gone down this route in the mid-long term. The general consensus from what I have read seems to be to use GAE to host weekend projects and then migrate away once you decide to take your project more seriously.

<comment><USER4> I'm fairly new to HN in terms of commenting, but have been here for a while lurking. Your comment and blog post in particular was very helpful. I carry a very strong design background myself and the only development experience I have is front-end.

I'm also looking to start learning Python and Django so I'll be sure to give your learning process a try. Many thanks for this!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I hope you find it helpful and good luck with the learning!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's typically a lot that's required in growing and scaling a web business. Often its a bit more than just learning to program and building your site. Technical co founders are generally hard to find, because the good ones get taken quickly. Additionally many technical co-founders don't see the idea in the same way you do. I'd recommend doing all you can to first validate your idea before attempting to find that technical cofounder or learning to program yourself. Your #2, seems like a great starting point. From there I'd focus on both #1 and #4, #1 more to build out your concept and prove it than to fully build the product. While it might seem like extra work, it's worth it to work through issues and will make finding a technical cofounder easier.

As for actually finding a technical cofounder, go to various events. Since you're in the bay area there's no shortage of them from Hackers and Founders meetups, to Lean Coffee. There's usually several per week so get out there early and start connecting with developers that may be able to help you down the line.

As for Techcrunch, like many others have mentioned here hold off. You won't get 10 chances to be on the front page unless your foursquare or twitter, even more so you want to be able to truly capitalize if you do receive that marketing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Since you are a group of girls in the startup scene, for whatever project you take on, I would suggest that you put a lot of focus on being in the public eye for your brand (I mean this in the least creepy way possible). In an industry that's clouded with males, a startup with a group of female founders is quite refreshing, and would likely get some good media attention.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why don't you guys use performable or unbounce to test demand before building the product?

Do some customer development, see if there's a real need, and see if/what people are willing to pay for what you build.

It's really be a waste of time and resources if your idea isn't something worth building.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do #2 first, to validate your idea. This will help you better persuade your tech cofounders to take the plunge and join you guys. At least it helped me!

After that's up, start learning programming. Rails or Django should do fine. Just get a MVP out there and slowly gain some users/customers

3) ..don't rush getting on TC

4) It's like looking for the ideal boyfriend. You'll never find him if YOU keep looking so hard and see everyone as a potential boyfriend. Instead just learn to program a little, build out a simplistic product and they'll come to you.

BTW, I'll be doing a "Learn Rails and build an app in 7 days" course soon, so if you're interested drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER9> I have to say skip straight to #4. Finding a tech founder will be the best thing you can do to get started. But you better decide what role each nontech has beforehand. I doubt the tech founder will be happy with 20% equity with the other 4 just coasting on the idea for the same amount.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a background in web development and would be open to talking to you about your project and helping you out in any way i can. Including helping you get your coding off the ground. Please let me know if you are interested. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, would be great to speak with you. Please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com and let us know the best way to get in touch. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Start learning and writing the code yourself. All you need is time and commitment - not money. This will enable you to implement your great ideas in future too and give you a job if this idea doesn't work out. Win/Win.

</comment><comment><USER12> It depends what sort of web company / product / service you intend to build. Regardless, if you have freelancers make parts of it, you should get your toes wet in programming so you can vet the deliverables etc.</comment>


Jeff Bezos tells employees 'one day Amazon will fail' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/16/jeff-bezos-amazon-will-fail-recording-report <comment><USER2> "If we start to focus on ourselves instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end,"

Is that a jab at Google, with all their constant killing of services that were used and loved, and their drama about internal policies and politics?

<comment><USER3> Being "customer obsessed" is practically Amazon's ethos. I think similar language was used in Amazon's IPO.</comment></comment>


Google tracks your movements, like it or not - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/13/the-associated-press-ap-exclusive-google-tracks-your-movements-like-it-or-not.html <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17749330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17749330)</comment>


The brain's reward circuitry regulates immunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v22/n8/full/nm.4157.html <comment><USER2> The actual paper is at [http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v22/n8/full/nm.4133.html](http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v22/n8/full/nm.4133.html)

I was going to see if it could be torn apart but

1) Shen-Orr is a very thorough, un-full-of-shit researcher,

2) I like how they used CyTOF in a novel capacity here, and

3) depressed people do tend to get sick more often.

That said, some of the largest divergences between mice and primates are in the brain, so it would be wise to exercise caution when generalizing these findings to humans.

If you need the full paper and have misplaced your subscription credentials, I hope you would not resort to plugging the DOI into [http://sci- hub.bz](http://sci-hub.bz) like so:

[http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nm.4133](http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nm.4133)

Because that would be wrong. Publishers need hot tubs in their 3rd bathrooms, just like Deans and coaches do.

The methods section is included in that version (papers without methods are like dehydrated water). Read it for yourself, don't listen to some blowhard on the Interwebs (i.e., me).

<comment><USER3> > un-full-of-shit researcher

Not a very strong statement ;)

<comment><USER4> That depends on who wrote it, and other context.

<comment><USER5> It's like saying un-poisonous food.

<comment><USER2> Well, that depends on the dose, doesn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an amazing study and a great step forward in our understanding of biology and previously mysterious mind-body connections. Besides helping to explain at least part of the classic Placebo Effect, it also opens the door to a great deal of potential both for making existing treatments more efficacious (by supplementing them with reward system intervention) and for new treatments (utilizing the brain reward system to influence immunological response).

The study seems very well-constructed and powerful. They demonstrate that direct stimulation of reward neuralchemistry produces specific and varied immune system responses, and also discover the pathways for this effect. They demonstrate causality well and also show that if the specific pathway they identify (the sympathetic nervous system connecting to lymphatic cells) is blocked, the increased immunological response no longer follows the neural reward stimulation. This seems really, really well done and it's high-impact science.

Upon reading the study, I wondered what might have created this mind-body link, in evolutionary terms. It turns out the authors considered this question as well. From the SciHub piece on this paper: _" Many activities that are known to stimulate reward-system signaling in the VTA, including engaging in sex, socializing and traveling, markedly increase exposure to pathogens. Therefore, it can be envisioned, as the authors suggest, that coupling the reward center to the immune system would offer a selective advantage, which helps to explain the intertwining of these two systems from an evolutionary perspective."_

Really cool stuff!

<comment><USER7> So there's basically a social selection sub-system running in the background.

Perhaps this sub-system extends to people (unknowingly) "outing" themselves to other instances of the sub-system--should they become something akin to free radicals, or a negative factor to it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those interested in the actual paper as opposed to the news writeup.

Nature: [http://www.nature.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/nm/journal/v2...](http://www.nature.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/nm/journal/v22/n8/full/nm.4133.html)

Scihub: [http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nm.4133](http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nm.4133)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wish i could read the actual paper. I've been in a really low spot for almost a year. The startup I was working at went under, and I took a job I hate. Every morning I'm sick to my stomach thinking about stepping into that office, and all day long I find it increasingly hard to actually get work done. I have no motivation. As my depression has gotten worse, I've become constantly sick. At first I thought it was because my son was in daycare, but my wife seems to avoid most of it. Just the other day my son got foot and mouth disease, something common in children but rare in adults. Of course my wife is fine, but I somehow get it.

<comment><USER9> I thought it had been conclusively shown that stress reduces the ability of our immune system to fight off disease. Start looking for another job, take some time off or spend more time on a hobby if you're able. Easier said that done most of the time but you owe it to yourself and those close to you. Hope you pull through.

Here's a link I could grab before the edit window closed; [http://www.apa.org/research/action/immune.aspx](http://www.apa.org/research/action/immune.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a pretty neat study. Essentially they show how the placebo effect can have such a big impact on health.

Getting medicine treatment -> Rewards the brain -> Leads to increased production of antibodies -> Patient is healthier.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it's just part of an ancient social ritual--where the sub-system recognizes the doctor type (basically a checkpoint in the system) as an authoritative verification of usefulness to society.

My imagination is running wild at the moment..

<comment><USER11> Or alternatively, the presence of social support means you're not in any immediate danger of starvation so you can afford to assign some more energy to running the immune system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Paywalled - my brain's reward system feels like it was kicked _hard_ \- so if I get sick next week, can I blame my poor immunity and susequent sickness on nature.com's paywall?

<comment><USER13> That seems like a comment for reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This effect has been observed for thousands of years - an ancient proverb says "A joyful heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

<comment><USER15> The novel part is causality - obviously sick people are less happy but this demonstrates cause and effect.

<comment><USER14> That causualty is the whole point of the old proverb. Being happy makes you healthier, being sad makes you sicker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> paywalled

<comment><USER17> Scihub: [http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nm.4157](http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nm.4157)</comment></comment>


Open Sourcing Katran: A Scalable Network Load Balancer - <AUTHOR> https://code.fb.com/open-source/open-sourcing-katran-a-scalable-network-load-balancer/ <comment><USER2> This is from last May...why share now?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found it interesting and hadn't seen it here.</comment></comment>


A REPL Story - <AUTHOR> http://sprungcanary.net/2015/11/29/a-repl-story/ <comment><USER3> Yet another person discovering the beauty of the REPL. On my own time, I write all of my software in Guile Scheme using Emacs + Geiser[0] as a development environment and it's wonderful. I wish my work environment could be half as nice as that.

[0] [http://geiser.nongnu.org/geiser_1.html#Introduction](http://geiser.nongnu.org/geiser_1.html#Introduction)

</comment><comment><USER4> Swift has a REPL. On an OS X command line, simply type 'swift'.

</comment><comment><USER5> Imagine if they detect that Lisp and Smalltalk have Inspectors for data... -> more blog posts about the wonders of 'REPL', Clojure and Functional Programming.

> clojure.core defines the vars _print-length_ and _print-level_

I wonder where all this is coming from? ;-)

Lisp programmers practice interactive 'bottom up programming' for decades now.

See for example Erik Sandewall's article 'Programming in an Interactive Environment: the "Lisp" Experience' from 1978:

[https://www.ida.liu.se/ext/caisor/archive/1978/001/caisor-19...](https://www.ida.liu.se/ext/caisor/archive/1978/001/caisor-1978-001.pdf)

<comment> j-pb Clojure is a lisp.

<comment><USER3> I think what lispm is getting at is that there a large number of Clojure programmers that do not realize that Clojure's features and the workflows it enables have been around for decades.

<comment> j-pb Fair enough, I guess the article is aimed mostly at newbies to clojure though, which mostly come from a non-lisp background.

<comment><USER5> That style of interactive exploratory programming is supported by a gazillion of languages and implementations. There is nothing Clojure specific about it.

From the early Lisp to most other forms of Lisp-derived languages (like Logo, Dylan, ...), over APL, Mathematica, up to Apple's Swift...

<comment> j-pb Neither is the article nor I arguing that in any way. It is a case study of developing a clojure program in the repl, done to inspire newcomers, not a scientific article claiming clojure invented the repl.

<comment><USER5> It explicitly mentions clojure, functional programming and a repl to enable this.

None of that is necessary. One can nicely use Smalltalk (recent version: Pharo), its object-oriented programming and its interactive IDE for that.

<comment> j-pb Just because it mentions it doesn't means it claims it's necessary.

The author states

" If you're new to Clojure, or functional programming, or languages that have a REPL, I hope this encourages you to crack open a REPL and start to think about your own story. It's a means to whatever end you have in mind. "

and even points to a super general google search.

[https://www.google.de/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=repl+dri...](https://www.google.de/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=repl+driven+development&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=kXBfVou2I_KA8QfB2YHYBw)

Did you actually read the thing, or just open it close it and decide to hat it because it not CL?

<comment><USER5> > Did you actually read the thing, or just open it close it and decide to hat > it because it not CL?

The author could benefit from some of the better REPLs of Common Lisp - <USER2> for example nicely integrate various tools (inspectors, debuggers, error handling, object-oriented programming, ...) to better support interactive/exploratory programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please tell me RET is a backronym for return like you'd hit when you've finished a line in a REPL ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Gosh, the color of the sidebar really hurts.. Am I the only one?

<comment><USER8> Nope, it's awful. I use this chrome extension called "reader mode": [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read- mode/nagcaaho...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read- mode/nagcaahojecfeopbghgihcabgiepploa)</comment></comment>


Ketamine treatment could offer new hope to patients with severe depression - <AUTHOR> http://wgntv.com/2018/01/25/ketamine-treatment-could-offer-new-hope-to-patients-with-severe-depression/ <comment><USER2> Before we dive into a long discussion about depression, who has made actual experiences with Ketamine and likes to talk about it?

<comment><USER3> I'll talk about mine if anyone wants to hear it. Never talked about it before

Its very clearly a dissociative. I didn't understand the term until I'd insuffalated a sufficient amount of ketamine. I ended up having very genuine deep conversations with both close friends and new ones while on it.

Time felt choppy. My consciousness felt very divided. My body felt drunk in a way but my mind felt more.. absorptive? Clear? I didn't feel drunk. I felt like I was dissecting common patterns of my own thought in a way that allowed me to be disattached from the outcomes of those thoughts - in the same way that people have found MDMA useful for dealing with PTSD by making the brain capable of dealing with issues without invoking the flight or fight response, I felt like I was capable of thinking about the way I was thinking in a hearthy constructive way rather than a destructive judgmental way that might happen soberly.

It all in all was quite interesting. I can't say I can remember all the details of the conversations I had, but I do to this day feel connected to them. It was not a waste of time or effort or "brain space" or whatever.. it was a worthwhile experience.

But I will say that it wasn't necessarily fun. I don't want to go out of my way to do it again - it requires mental effort and made me mentally tired. To me that makes it non-addictive, but I could see why some people might get attached to it.

<comment><USER4> If you were insufflating it, you had a very ambiguous dose and were not using it under the care of a physician such as discussed by the article; not to discount your experience, which is somewhat similar to mine, but readers should know that it is very different from what the article is discussing, which is a very specific dose given over a specific period of time by IV by a medical doctor, under his/her supervision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Past Discussion on Ketamine's Effect on Depression (in the past month):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400925)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393861)</comment>


[React Component Libs]MaterialUI vs Ant.D vs Fluent vs Semantic vs Grommet vs BP - <AUTHOR> http://sapandiwakar.in/best-react-component-libraries-comparison/ <comment><USER2> Good article for those are are starting to explore the React UI Libraries. The post gives a great overview of libs.

However, you can include some demo to compare the bundle size and load time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, that'd also be a neat way to compare the libs. I will try to see if I can put a demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We are starting a new project and we have been researching about React UI libs. We wanted to go with Ant design but we also found that it is very difficult to customize while using Ant design. We are still searching but this post helped. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially, we were also in favor of going with Ant.design. Everyone has different requirements but being able to provide customization was our important criterion to select a lib.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious about some of the side projects that you guys and girls are working on. <comment><USER2> Every year I do NaNoGenMo, so I have a couple narrative-generation projects in planning stages for that.

I'm working on a VN involving time loops, which is essentially an attempt to integrate the typical completionist play style of hardcore VN players (wherein people will often try for 100% completion of all dialogue and game devs will often hide the canonical plot threads behind options that only open up when you get all the good ends or all the good & bad ends) with the narrative -- i.e., the plot only progresses when the character dies and restarts.

I also write small projects periodically. (For instance, recently I wrote a script that superimposed Jenny Holzer quotes in white-on-red on black and white images, aping Barbara Kreuger's iconic style.)

<comment><USER3> Oh my, I've had an idea for a long time to code a procedurally generated story of some kind. Didn't know there was already an internet community doing this!!!

First had the idea when I stumbled upon the game called Dwarf Fortress.

<comment><USER2> The procedurally generated game community is huge. The procedurally generated prose community is much smaller.

NaNoGenMo has been going since, like, 2013. Every year, a bunch of us get together in the issues section of a github page and discuss attempts to generate long-form narrative. (We've been able to generate passable poetry for years, but we have yet to figure out a way to get prose that remains engaging, coherent, and human-like for more than about a chapter.) There are a lot of very different techniques being used. (For instance, a couple years ago I wrote a planner that emitted debug output in the form of a first-person hardboiled heist story; somebody else that year produced a really good simulation of bad star trek fanfiction using a mixture of templating and object-oriented state tracking; somebody else made a great comic book by picking random sentences from public domain detective novels and then finding creative commons licensed photos on flickr based on tags taken from key words in those sentences and post-processing them to make them look hand-drawn.)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Thanks for sharing, I'm excited to take a look at some of the examples you mentioned!

Side comment, but somewhat related: I just started getting into reading and the most recent book I finished was Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I just started 1Q84, also by Murakami. Those books really do something to my brain when I read them. Ever since I got into it, I've had these strange desires to write a book of my own, but since I have no experience in the matter, I was thinking of clever ways to procedurally generate plot points, then let a randomizer run in a loop until it generates something interesting.

For example, in multiple arrays, you could create lists for different plot elements: ex: "main character is a " [student, engineer, pilot, detective]. You can do something for physical features as well, and personality traits, and generate completely randomized characters. Then, you could do something for the plot as well... If I were able to do this as a starting point, I could write a story by filling in the blanks, so to speak...

So, is there a popular forum or perhaps Twitter that all of these enthusiasts hang out at? =D

<comment><USER2> There's a mostly-dead generative art mailing list and slack ([http://generative-art.slack.com](http://generative-art.slack.com)), and the official stuff is on github ([http://nanogenmo.github.io](http://nanogenmo.github.io)), but most of the off-season discussion is actually on the botally slack (despite that actually being oriented toward twitter artbots) because of a big overlap between the two communities.

The story generator idea you described above is an example of templating, & it's used pretty often. It's easy to make a good looking chunk of story that way, but difficult to make a 50k word novella that's readable (the target of nanogenmo).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm working on a small solidity/Ethereum project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have anymore info you can give on that?</comment></comment>


Hello, my name is Sander and I'm a workaholic - <AUTHOR> I've just read a great article that points out I can be a workaholic. And so can you…
At least, that's the answer I got from the test created by researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway.
Can I trust this test? Well, it's rather more complex than that. Especially as I've always been suspicious of this being a possible case.
Of course, there are days when I'm lazy as hell. Getting out of the bed way after any working person should. Not being able to get anything done within the awake hours. We've all been there!
At other times, I'd rather spend the whole day crawling through catacombs and escaping from an exit room. Going to cinema and playing boardgames through the night. Something I let myself do only couple of days ago.
Yet, all this doesn't mean I'm not a workaholic.
Moreover, I've been pushing myself hard this past month to live such a life. For a change. To charge my batteries after a long period of only working has come to an end.
So what shows that I'm a workaholic?
This test uses seven basic criteria to identify work addiction. All by scoring responses to the statements on the scale of (1) Never, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, and (5) Always, as follows:
* You think of how you can free up more time to work.
* You spend much more time working than first intended.
* You work to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness and depression.
* You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.
* You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.
* You de-prioritize hobbies, leisure activities, and exercise because of your work.
* You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.
The researchers suggest that if you respond with "often" or "always" to at least four of the seven items, you may be a bona fide workaholic.
In my case, I got the jackpot.
More on that in my blog: https://medium.com/sander-gansen/hello-my-name-is-sander-and-im-a-workaholic-6bbb263846ca <comment><USER2> Can you share the link to the test as well ?</comment>


Boeing Dreamliner Fire Shuts Heathrow as Second 787 Aborts Trip - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-12/london-heathrow-suspends-flights-after-fire-involving-boeing-787.html

<comment><USER2> Some better articles:

[http://www.airlinereporter.com/2013/07/ethiopian- boeing-787-...](http://www.airlinereporter.com/2013/07/ethiopian- boeing-787-dreamliner-fire-closes-heathrow/)

[http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article- xml/awx...](http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article- xml/awx_07_12_2013_p0-596731.xml)</comment>


The Science of How to Evaluate Therapists - <AUTHOR> http://thomastberry.com/the-ideal-therapist-and-the-troublesome-client-dr-melfi-and-tony-soprano/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious what others thoughts are on the choices one is confronted with when mental illness or significant distress surfaces. Psychotherapy, medication or informal help? If psychotherapy, which therapist? What algorithm for making this decision do you use?

In my own experiences the rough sketch of ideal characteristics mentioned match up with whom I have found helpful. Practically, I've found the issue a nuanced one; I've had times where I was focused so much on finding a great therapist that I overlooked ones who were "good enough", and others where I settled for someone who was not helpful at all. The balance is elusive, and that no objective criteria is helpful in evaluating a therapist made a difficult choice more difficult still.

What I've learned is that word of mouth recommendations may be most helpful, as the pattern of effective therapists is surprisingly consistent across clients (although by no means perfect). Of course this method may be hampered by the general public silence on the subject and the stigma that still exists in some quarters - which is very much alive and kicking in my circles.

<comment><USER2> Note that there is a divide between clinical psychologists, who also do private practice, and psychotherapists. CP are more expensive, but also worth evaluating.

Now for more anecdotal part: neither type has that much time to think about your problem and most likely spend time between sessions thinking about their newest patients. So I would advise against seeing the same one for more than 6 months unless you see consistent progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically there are clinical social workers, clinical psychologists, counseling psychologists, counselors, and psychiatrists - all of whom typically perform some form of psychotherapy, at least here in the US. Whom will be more expensive typically depends more on years of experience and demand than which division they fall under.

And I don't follow your second point.

<comment><USER2> In the UK there is a separate profession (and qualifications) of psychotherapists. They don't necessarily have a qualification in psychology or psychiatry, or work as a social worker. I thought this was true also in the US?. (Anyone can call themselves a counselor in the UK. Not sure what qualification clinical social workers have).

My second point was simply that pragmatically, an hour or less per week, which is how much time you see any of these practitioners, is not all that much time, and during an actual session they have to deliver the therapy. Most decent practitioners will spend some of their time outside actual sessions thinking about their patients, and human nature is that they will probably think most about the newer ones. Unless your therapy needs no serious 'course corrections' after the first few months, it is probably easier to find a new therapist than to get an existing one to rethink. As I said, this is based on my anecdotal (but unfortunately very long) experience; take it how you will.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the US the regulations differ, and depend on the discipline (i.e. it is not unusual for a therapist to meet qualifications for one state, but move to another and no longer be able to practice without further education or testing). There is no actual "psychotherapy" discipline so named - just the collection of ones I mention above.

However, in the vast majority of states the terms counselor or psychotherapist or psychologist or any number of related terms are protected by law for those who are licensed by a psychotherapeutic discipline alone. The only popular categorization of those who perform psychotherapy-like services here that anyone can use is "coaching" \- but that's sort of therapy for well people looking to reach for the stars - they are barred from treating people with serious disturbances.

On your second point, I find that an interesting idea. I do wonder though what the correlation is between the amount of time a therapist spends thinking about a particular client and their case and that case outcome. The research I've seen indicates that generally a good therapist (one whose clients achieve consistently better than average outcomes) does so regardless of the number of clients he has, or how disturbed his clients are.

Out of curiosity, have you gravitated towards a particular type of therapy (CBT, psychodynamic, existential, ect)? Not because the treatment type matters a great deal, but its been shown that certain personality types tend to congregate in different theoretical orientations.

Random thought that just popped in my head - I wonder whether one of the reasons why CBT is getting less effective is because it has attracted many therapists who feel pressured to do it because of its public relations successes rather than any deep affinity with its principles.

<comment><USER3> > I wonder whether one of the reasons why CBT is getting less effective

No it's probably about better placebo controls.

Pain meds in US: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10351230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10351230)

Anti depressant meds: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20241/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20241/abstract)

Better response to placebo is not a new thing, and is not limited to psychological therapies. (These are all the same source, but lots of discussion.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032149)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3015479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3015479)

<comment><AUTHOR> To be a bit more explicit - the finding of that study was not that efficacy had gone down relative to placebos, but rather that the absolute efficacy of CBT is going down. The authors of the study actually suggest that the reason its becoming less effective is because of the opposite of your suggestion - it's going down because the placebo response is likely getting weaker in CBT (1). Which goes back to my original point about the factors that influence of efficacy of placebos - and of course, to the parent article. I think this would have been a much more productive conversation if you had just read it first before replying.

(1) [https://uit.no/Content/418448/The%20effect%20of%20CBT%20is%2...](https://uit.no/Content/418448/The%20effect%20of%20CBT%20is%20falling.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> @Mods: the flag was because this needs to be marked NSFW due to the picture at the top of the page.

[This comment can be altered or deleted]

<comment><AUTHOR> A picture of an artistic nude statue is NSFW?

<comment><USER5> Yes, and in very poor taste IMHO.

If the boss comes by with that image taking up half the screen, he's not going to assume you are researching what makes for good therapy, hence the acronym "NSFW".

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know anyone who gets their erotic jollies from looking at statues - but maybe I'm weird. It's the shot that frames the opening scene of Tony's first and last meeting with Melfi, which seemed fitting. If someone is so sensitive to representations of nudity, then they are unlikely to have seen the Sopranos and therefore unlikely to get much from this article beyond a perfunctory summary of the research - which can be had easily elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> I should probably have qualified my original comment.

I can recognize the artistic merit and value of such imagery where appropriate, and while I didn't know where the image was from (TIL!), I knew it had been included for a very good reason.

I was just snap-reacting to the "woop, that wouldn't have been great to open on lunch break" thing, for its' own sake. Basically what sam_goody said.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for an old HN post about how to effectively lodge a complaint - <AUTHOR> Hello, and happy new year!
I am attempting to find an old article that was posted to HN a while back, about how to effectively lodge a dispute/complaint. I believe it was about telephone companies. It spoke about sticking to the facts, staying emotionless and documenting everything.
I wanted to share it with a friend, but cannot find it, even though it was front page for a while.
Also worth resharing with the HN community IMO.
Help appreciated. <comment><USER2> I believe that was [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft- credit-r...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit- reports/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926))

The emotionless part:

"Instead, you want to communicate with the bank in a manner which suggests that you're an organized professional who is capable of escalating the matter if the bank does not handle it themselves. You do not yell – not that you're ever verbally speaking with anyone, but you wouldn't yell in a letter, either. You do not bluster. ("I will tell on you to my attorney" is, generally, bluster, and that's bluster that is common to people who do not actually have attorneys.) You instead present as if you're collecting a paper trail."

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing, the HN community never fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a Search box at the bottom of the site.</comment>


Why Electric Cars Don't Have Better Batteries - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/review/534866/why-we-dont-have-battery-breakthroughs/

<comment><USER2> I felt this was a good example for people to consider when they hear someone say "We've got new battery that crushes the competition!" Batteries are a great example of technology that has been around forever and yet is still not completely understood.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the worst instructions you've ever read? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I haven't directly read these instructions myself, but I do like this quote from "Most Secret War" by R.V. Jones:

they [the Royal Aircraft Establishment] had at one stage changed the method of packing bombs into crates, with the result that a crate arrived at Farnborough bearing the legend 'Caution! The bombs in this crate are packed in a different manner from that formerly used. Compared with the old methods the bombs are now packed upside down, and the crate must therefore be opened at the bottom. To prevent confusion, the bottom has been labelled "Top".'

</comment><comment><USER3> My brother bought a gas motor for a bicycle that came with instructions from china that were poorly translated and were hard to follow. Assembly instructions without words can also be frustrating like in the case of a cat tree / scratching post I bought.

</comment><comment><USER4> For a gym machine:

"Adjust pad rolls height at the same level of upper side of the things; place feet on foot plate and strech the heels fully towards the floor"

</comment><comment><USER5> Instructions for assembling furniture. Man those suck.

<comment><USER6> Most instructions for assembling furniture that contain texts in steps usually do suck. I've found that many stores also opt for purely graphical steps with no texts (e.g. Ikea furnitures, Staples office chairs), and those are usually a lot more intuitive; they also force the packaging and labeling of parts to be as clear as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> most probably furniture instructions from Black Red White company. While IKEA has many separate steps illustrated in their instructions, Black Red White's contains like 4 steps in total how to assembly their furniture while having 4 times more elements</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my web app: WantsThis - <AUTHOR>

We just launched last week into a pretty competitive market.
The site was built with two people, myself and my partner over roughly 8 months. I did all the design/frontend while he handled all the programming.
We'd love to hear any feedback you guys/gals have.
http://wantsthis.com <comment><USER2> Clickable link:

<http://wantsthis.com>

The app seems nice, although there seem to be some minor rendering issues when viewed in FF 3.5.5 on Ubuntu 9.04 (the text in the 'sign up free' box gets a bit out of the box). However, there were other bugs - when I searched for a 'linux t-shirt', the 'next' arrow dissapeared at one point (there was a circle in it's place suggesting that it's loading). I then refreshed the page, and the previous item I added to my list appeared twice. I didn't review it any further, though, so I don't know if there are any other bugs. Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am seeing the FireFox issue, I think the CSS needs to be tweaked a little more. I am investigating the results for the search items now.. Thanks for the bug finding!

<comment><USER3> I like the bold styling but it's a bit too big and clunky IMO - you've got "Create your FREE wish list" then "Create Your Ultimate Wish List" then "Create the perfect wishlist for ..." all one after another. Instead I'd have this up next to your "WantsThis" banner with maybe one body text repitition above the fold, not 3. It's all a little bit too busy IMO.

Also perhaps indicate on the direct purchase links (images in the top products lists) that they are buy links.

Like your login box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent suggestion, other people have also told me the front page needs a bit of work and I agree. Thanks for the input

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. I really like that you can start using it without registering. I assume that the assigned name is usable beyond "now?"

2\. Signup is easy and low-stress (no "how am I obligating myself" qualms).

3\. Bug: before I signed up, I clicked one of the suggested wants, and I typed in a want. Then I registered. But in my registered persona, only the typed-in want was on my wish list, the clicked-on want had disappeared. Probably an edge case.

4\. It looks like you make your money when buyers click on your Amazon affiliate links for the wanted objects. I wonder if you might make a little more money if you also put an explicit Amazon affiliates box/widget on the side, with a list of related objects?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Its usable forever, its checked by cookies but you could just return to that URL and continue using it. However its possible that another user could add remove things, which is why the password protection exists.

2) That was important to us, glad it came across that way.

3) Thanks, looking into it.

4) We have a number of affiliates including Amazon, hopefully with more traffic we can expand. We are also looking into recommendations and price matching directly related to affiliates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love apps like these, especially when they have domains that make sense to have usernames in them.

The amazon.com price comparisons are a little annoying to me, though, because most products don't ship internationally from Amazon.com. Not only that, if I'm entering prices that are in CAD$ and price comparisons are from a site (Amazon.com) that sells items in USD$, the price comparisons don't add a lot of value. It'd be nice if there was a way to set a locale to get price comparisons from. That way, you'd still be able to earn affiliate income, but even more than before because it's more highly targeted to the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> Localization is important to use, especially regarding sites like Amazon, we are currently working on getting it integrated. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> An auto-complete would do good to this app. A rich auto-complete with images, better.

<comment><AUTHOR> An excellent idea! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i really like it, the search works well, the design is nice...well done!

the auto-generated name thing is a great idea, but I wonder if you could increase the conversion rate by replacing the copy "Create an account now, so you can choose a better name for your wish list!" with the form itself. That copy makes it seem as if I need to register in order to select a name, but in reality selecting a name (and making a password) is the registration process.

one question: are you only pulling products from amazon and newegg currently, and if so, plans to expand?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I'll see how feasible it is to work that in. We are slowly adding more sites as we discover their API's and such. We hope to at least cover all the main shopping sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I just checked your app for sql injection. The password I chose while registering a new list was d'artagnan and, sure enough, I was granted access without any error message whatsoever, but once I logged out I couldn't log in again. I thought that you might have removed the ' character automatically, but I also tried with dartagnan and couldn't log in either.

<comment><AUTHOR> You _should_ be able to use an apostrophe in a password without issue as we did test for that. I'll see if I can reproduce that error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, this looks great; I'm signing up purely out of interest. Though, one small thing - if neither password field is filled out and the form is sent, I receive this message: "The password fields must match". Insignificant non-bug, but still not the correct error message to display. I look forward to see where you go with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Fix is going up for this in the next few minutes, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice. The account auto-creation is neat. I didn't see an option to change the auto-generated account name (such as a35) to something of my choice.

The Preference checkboxes at the bottom of /settings.php don't appear correctly on Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should receive a message at the top of your list if you have an auto- created list. I'll do some testing on chrome, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If a user searches for something like 27" iMac, there are no results, but if the user searches for 27 iMac, the 27" imac is found. It might be good to strip any "'s in the add field before searching.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. NSFW thumbnail in recently added items list

2\. The grey boxes and text-shadows combine to form some really unreadable text

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. We attempted to white list the recently added and most popular lists by trusted sites. It seems amazon sells adult toys, so we will have to tweak that filter a bit...

2\. Very true, I'll switch that to something more user friendly

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> nice design and intuitive UI, I like it. What about sync the wish list instead of import the wish list? sync a wish list will cover import and export as well. As User, I will love this option, but sure there's a lot to do to make this work properly, if that's possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I saw this on another site, I'll see if their API allows for deleting and adding items externally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Easy to understand and use, I just don't see how this would be useful? Or why I would use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its most useful for people who do a lot of shopping online for friends and family members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool app! How do you guys plan to make $$?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have affiliate accounts on some online shopping sites, on those items we get a small commission for the sale.</comment></comment>